[ILL-L] Lost Book Invoice Advice

[Laura Barnard]

Emma,

Yes, you should pay the bill.  As borrower you are on the hook until the item returns to the owning  library.

I don't think it unreasonable that the lending library was unable to respond in less than a week, though acknowledgement of the email would have been helpful and polite.  

This is how we handle this situation for our patrons:

	We tell the patron (and have trained the better portion of our staff to tell the patron) that ILL needs to check with the owning library and that it may take a couple of days or a couple of weeks depending on how quickly the lender can respond.

	On the patron's account, we set the item to Claims Returned status, which avoids the accumulation of fines while we seek out the book.

	In cases where we no longer have the Claims Returned option, or for some reason it isn't appropriate, we discharge the item but place a message in the patron's account that explains the situation and says that if the item is never found and the patron still held accountable for lost charges, those charges will be posted to the account with a separate transaction.   

I, too, hope we were not the ones who were unresponsive and helped make a difficult situation worse.


Laura Barnard
Coordinating Library Technician
Interlibrary  Loans
Seattle Public Library (UOK)
206-386-4601



-----Original Message-----
From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Emma Beaven
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 9:20 AM
To: Interlibrary Loan Listserv
Subject: [ILL-L] Lost Book Invoice Advice

Hi everyone,
  I've run into a problem with a lost book and I'm wondering if anyone 
can give me any advice.  On 7/9/09, we had a customer with an 
interlibrary loan book checked out to him which he claimed to have 
returned.  His record was accumulating fines because of this and he was 
blocked from checking out any materials.  On 7/10 one of my staff 
members attempted to call the library and left a voicemail.  He tried to 
get in touch by phone again on 7/13/09 and still the phone went to 
voicemail.  He sent an email out on 7/13 to no avail.  On 7/14 he 
attempted to contact this library both via fax and Ariel.  On 7/15 I had 
him google the library and call its circulation desk where someone 
answered the phone.  Someone from the circulation desk checked to make 
sure someone was in ILL and sent the call back to her.  She said that 
yes she had received the phone calls but had not responded and that it 
would take her at least a week from that day (7/15) to search for the 
book.  She never called back.  Since our customer was blocked from 
borrowing and this ILL department was pretty much unresponsive, I 
removed the book and and fines from the patrons record and let it go.  
Today I received an invoice for $215.00 dated 8/10/09.  To me it is 
completely unreasonable to have to wait a month for a shelf check,  all 
the while keeping our patron blocked from checkout.  Please let me know 
if you think we're within our rights to refuse to pay this invoice 
because this library refused to communicate with us in a timely manner.  
Just a note, on the invoice is written in bod "Thank you for your prompt 
attention to this matter."

Thanks for your advice,

-- 
Emma Beaven
Resource Sharing Supervisor
MILO
Enoch Pratt Free Library
400 Cathedral St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410)396-5498
(410)396-5837 (fax)




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